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A conic is the curve obtained as the intersection of a plane, called the cutting plane, with the surface of a double cone (a cone with two nappes).It is usually assumed that the cone is a right circular cone for the purpose of easy description, but this is not required; any double cone with some circular cross-section will suffice.
More generally, when the directrix is an ellipse, or any conic section, and the apex is an arbitrary point not on the plane of , one obtains an elliptic cone [4] (also called a conical quadric or quadratic cone), [5] which is a special case of a quadric surface.
Slope illustrated for y = (3/2)x − 1.Click on to enlarge Slope of a line in coordinates system, from f(x) = −12x + 2 to f(x) = 12x + 2. The slope of a line in the plane containing the x and y axes is generally represented by the letter m, [5] and is defined as the change in the y coordinate divided by the corresponding change in the x coordinate, between two distinct points on the line.
If the cone is right circular the intersection of a plane with the lateral surface is a conic section. In general, however, the base may be any shape [2] and the apex may lie anywhere (though it is usually assumed that the base is bounded and therefore has finite area, and that the apex lies outside the plane of the base). Contrasted with right ...
As in all cases in the physical world, the trajectory is always an approximation of a parabola. The presence of air resistance, for example, always distorts the shape, although at low speeds, the shape is a good approximation of a parabola. At higher speeds, such as in ballistics, the shape is highly distorted and does not resemble a parabola.
The conical hill as a geomorphological term first appeared in the German language, as Kegelberg, coined by Goethe and geologists of his era. From their natural appearance these were mostly basaltic or phonolitic landforms in the shape of a mathematical cone, hence why the term came to be used in the early geological literature.
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Besides being a conic section, a hyperbola can arise as the locus of points whose difference of distances to two fixed foci is constant, as a curve for each point of which the rays to two fixed foci are reflections across the tangent line at that point, or as the solution of certain bivariate quadratic equations such as the reciprocal ...